Self Brining Sauerkraut

Probiotics, vitamin C, red pepper and garlic….what’s not to love in an era when we are all looking to boost our immune  systems? We’ll be eating some every day until late spring.

1.       Weigh your cabbage in kilograms. One pound of cabbage equals one tablespoon of salt.

2.       Shred the cabbage as thinly as possible and toss it into a big bowl.

3.       Sprinkle the salt over the veg and massage with your clean hands. Massaging  breaks down the cell walls and draws out the moisture. It squeaks and scrunches and shrinks down by half. This takes between five and ten minutes.

4.       Add 2-3 teaspoons of red pepper flakes and three to four garlic cloves and mix.

5.       Pack very firmly into a canning jar. Half a cabbage fills a quart jar; a full head packs into a larger one. Use your hands to really pack the cabbage down. The brine will slowly ease out and fill the gaps.

6.  

     Put the jar on the top of the fridge. Over the next few days, the ferment will begin to fizz and bubble.

7.        Watch the brine increase and decrease as the temperature changes. Open the jar every day to release the gasses.

8.       Taste after seven or eight days. Is it done? Not yet? Put it back up. We let ours sit for about two weeks, then put it in the fridge to eat. This is a very potent brew!

Kitchen History

   

             My kitchen is small, just enough room for a table and two chairs, the big old stove, a small refrigerator, and one person making dinner. The counter holds the electric kettle, the toaster, and my kitchen-aide mixer on one side of the sink, the cutting boards and compost bin (the classic yogurt container!) on the other.  There is not room for fancy gadgets and new equipment. We keep the Crockpot and microwave—both ancient—in the back hall. Cooking, in our home, has not changed much since the house was built. Nor has the room. Every night, I stand  in the same spot, using the same knife and cutting board, chop veggies, turn 180 degrees to the stove to sauté them in the cast iron pan, bake bread, drain pasta….the simple rituals of food preparation. Some days, there is a frenzy in the kitchen, as I prep bread dough, yogurt,  and soup for the week, balancing sheet pans on the step stool and washing dishes as I go, because there is no room to stack them up.  In summer, I make jam and pickles, can tomatoes and beans. A lot of food moves through this small space. There’s a skill and an art to daily cooking that we learn by doing, day after day.

      

          And I wonder how many people have stood chopping onions, taken the same steps, before me? Will someone else follow me?

Corona Virus Prep List...

With the outbreak of the corona virus, and one case of a teacher in Oregon, there is a decent chance that I will be looking at a school closure in the coming weeks. I hope not. It would create havoc on my ninth grader’s community service project and well as the juniors and AP testing, but, given the general germy behavior of high school students and how they are constantly eating each other’s snacks and sharing water bottles, school closure feels inevitable.  

So, I am preparing. First, I am making a new batch of sauerkraut packed with garlic and hot peppers to ward off germs—no one will come near us!—and support our immune systems. I’ve been considering food stores in the basement and ordered another box of whole wheat pasta on Saturday. Mark bought some emergency soup. We have winter stores of potatoes, onions, dried fruit, and canned tomatoes, as well as connections for greens. The chickens are starting to lay again. We won’t starve.

More importantly, I have been thinking about what I would do at home for a couple of weeks. City business would also be curtailed, I suspect, so I will have time on my hands. I can go for long walks in the woods and work in the garden, but that will only go so far. I’ve made a list of projects that have to be done some time soon, complete with possible purchases for the next week.  

1.       Repaint bedroom trim to sage green—get paint!

2.       Wash living room walls.

3.       Hang blue gate in garden—purchase wood for post and rings to hang.

4.       Prep house for painting—scrape, patch, prime. Primer and patching, sandpaper.

5.       Replace cracked windows. Glass and glazing.

6.       Knit sweater vests? Investigate grey wool in the closet.

7.       Repair garden beds—new posts? Brackets?

8.       Clean the basement! No new purchases, but maybe something goes away?

9.       Read: Strong Towns, some possible young adult fiction….stock up on books!

10.   Can more local beans. Do we have lids?

11.   Finish rewiring the stove. Mark reminds me that he will still be working, even if from home. Check the wire supply anyways.

12.   Give the Ark a good bath and prep for summer camping.

A couple of weeks off now could lead to more time for camping this summer….a mixed blessing, indeed.

Repainting

Twenty one years ago, Mark and I bought our house, moved in, and then he flew back to Denmark to finish a contract, leaving me alone, at first, and then with my friend Anne, an artist, and a house that was, literally, blank white walls. It did not hurt that it was the rainiest late fall I have ever known. We were trapped inside and liked working together.  We started simply and painted the extra bed room orange with deep purple trim and a white wash, as I had already painted my bedroom the color of daffodils in spring. Nice, we thought, let’s keep painting!

                We moved onto the theory of the bathroom fairly quickly. We wanted it to look like water. We chose the paints—teal and blue, with the extra green from the bedroom and white we found downstairs, left by the previous owners.  We primed a flat large board and began the experiments—four variations of swirling colors. Anne painted; I washed brushes. When we were satisfied, we went up for dinner and then checked the results one more time. Yes.  Teal base. White lines. Blue and green dashes to follow, chasing the white around the room. On Friday night, we began painting. The blue went on with a tricky little roller for cutting in, so a bit of white still showed through. When that dried then next night, Anne drew the lines and I followed with the light blue and then the green. We climbed up and down the ladder, bumped into each other, called back and forth about colors and the results. Before we fell into bed, the room was done.

                The next week, during the biggest rainstorm, we painted the kitchen. The colors are based on my favorite huge yellow sweater and my red plates, woven together. We pulled red threads from the weave of the sweater, holding them up to paint chips until we matched it perfectly. Then we went, once again, to the paint store, where the clerks recognized us. On Friday night, we peeled off the contact paper that had covered the higher parts of the walls, took the cabinet doors of and brought them downstairs to where the picnic benches waited for them, and roughly sanded the walls.  We were ready. On Saturday, we laid down the deep yellow together. Then, while I went to the basement to paint the doors red, Anne took a sponge and wiped red over the yellow, tempering the glow. We also stripped the layers of paint off of the door hinges, revealing a beautiful Art Deco design. The hinges, like so much of the house, were original.  She painted the door red and yellow with her steady hands. When we were done, we went out for dinner.

                We finished our work in late November. Anne moved onto other friends who needed help, but she left behind so much beauty that we live with every day.  And today, when I repainted the bathroom, I followed the same procedure, remembering those rainy nights of work and friendship. It’s not exactly the same—my hand will never be hers—but it’s close. 

Chickens (and rabbits) in the Garden

  

 

            Fact: chickens and rabbits can wreck havoc on gardens. I have seen a chicken gleefully take out an entire row of carefully sprouted carrots in one stroke of the leg. Later in the season, a small flock can much their way through a winter’s worth of kale and collards in just a day. Chickens can dig a dust bath hole so deep that they get lost in it. Rabbits will nibble on anything and dig tunnels under the neighbor’s shed to escape to their dusty driveway. But then, there are the benefits; the fertilizer dropped as they wander around, the bugs eaten, the compost processed….the entertainment factor. I guess we need to practice Defensive Gardening. Here are the tools.

1.       Milk crates: I place milk crates over emerging perennials in the spring. Anything that looks tasty to a chicken or the rabbit is covered. Rhubarb. Angelica. Raspberries. Sorrel. The crate allows air and light through but provides a good cover for growing plants. They are also light, cheap, and easy.

2.       Fencing circles: Using scraps of fence, I circle delicate plants in a bed.

3.       Half high fences: Since the rabbit can hop up into—and across—the raised beds, I surround each with a fence. We bought four foot high welded wire fence in a big roll and cut it in half to wrap around each garden bed. I attach it with a staple gun to the bed so that the plants  in the bed have protection knee high.  It comes off quickly and can be moved easily. Chickens are also deterred by the fencing, although the nibble through the gaps.

4.       Hoops: Hoops and plastic can both warm and dry beds, as well as protect delicate crops. They also help keep birds from pulling up new corn plants.

5.       Garden fences: Using the same welded wire, I surround the entire garden on the chicken run side. Lately, I have been using the raised beds and trellises to attach the fencing so that it is higher. With very lively chickens, I cut a roll in half and merge it with the other, twisting the vertical wires, creating a six foot fence around the main garden.  This is keeping the critters out of the run for the winter, allowing the grass to grow and rest, and will also keep the chickens out of the yard in the summer, cutting down on droppings and munching.

6.       Twigs: Twigs laid in beds can keep the cats from pooping in beds, but that is another story.

If you keep the materials similar, the look is far more coherent than random pieces found of the streets.

Line Drying

When we bought our house, it came with a washer and dryer. The washer was avocado green, from the mid-seventies. The dryer looked like something from 1959. It last for four years and a part burned out. Mark replaced the part, it burnt out again, and we called in the repairmen. It’s gone, they told us.  We gave in and hung the clothes outside all summer. It was not a trial.

The next winter, we considered our options. Buy a new dryer, which was not cheap nor was it energy efficient. Or we could hang the clothes in the basement for free. We hung. After a few years of slow drying in a wet basement, we bought a couple of big, sturdy drying racks and moved the process upstairs. Then I took the dowels from the old rack, laid then across the rafters in what is now the dining room, and hung pants and heavy shirts there, over the woodstove. Our weekly laundry air dries, spread around the house, in about 36 hours.

Sheets and towels are a different story. They pile up in the basement, waiting for a dry spell—we usually get one or two a winter. Some years, the sun breaks never come…so Mark loads up all of the sheets, towels, fleece jackets, and bathrobes into his big duffle bag and hauls them down the street. He spends a couple of hours reading, washing, and drying all of the big laundry in the old-fashioned Laundromat with the murals of rivers and waterfalls above the machines. He enjoys the orderliness of the process and the feeling of accomplishment. Even with the occasional trip to the Laundromat, we are happy with our system.

  We had a bright, cold spell this weekend, so I pushed all of the sheets through n Sunday morning and hung them outside just as the fog broke. They were half dry by night, so I left them on the line until I came home from work this afternoon. They smell great and we are good for another month and a half.  Spring will come before the pile overtakes us again.

Candlemas weekend

Daylilies begin

Finley walk

Candlemas Mantle

primroses

Prep for seed planting

Mark's compost area after pruning